“You said ‘her’ as if I’m meant to know who she is.”
“Ava.”
“Ava …?”
“Ava Kapoor.”
After a couple of seconds of cold observation while I struggled to look like someone who was in the know, Xavier said: “Come on, Otto. Ava Kapoor. The resident.”
“Right, of course. Ava Kapoor. Yeah. You … you think you saw her?”
“Well, I definitely saw someone.”
“What was she like? Did she seem …”
Which words matched my hopes for how Ava Kapoor seemed? Amiable? Tranquil? In possession of all her marbles? I’d read a kind and practical letter of invitation from her, so I don’t know why I anticipated an encounter with a Miss Havisham type. I’d like to know what it is that makes that disbelief so rigid. The one concerning women who live by themselves, I mean. Even though I know several, and even though I understand that for five out of seven of the female loners I know, it’s truly their choice, the next female loner I meet never benefits from these other friendships I share, because at the moment our paths cross I instantly revert to Oh God, what ails this person??
Xavier said: “What was she like? I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re even asking, Otto. But she held up a sign. Well, a word she’d written on a piece of paper.”
He paused. “I think it said HELLO.”
“OK …”
“But it could also have said HELP.”
“It could also … have said HELP?”
“If you don’t stop echoing me, Otto Montague … I mean Shin …”
“It’s just—Listen, if you had to decide right now what the sign said, which would you lean towards? Did it say HELLO, or did it say HELP?”
Xavier raised his hand to his mouth, dropped it. “HELP. I think. But she didn’t seem frantic. She came out of there”—he pointed towards the last compartment in the next carriage—“held up the sign, then … I think she shrugged? A ‘never mind’ sort of shrug. And she switched carriages.”
“Was she … dressed all in white?”
“What? How does that affect our decision?”
“Our—OK, keep your hair on … what decision?”
“What do you think we should do about Ava Kapoor either saying hello or asking for help, Otto? Since I’m banned from acting as an individual.”
“Glad you understand the ground rules for this trip … Well, we return the greeting, obviously. Or if it was the other thing, then we help.”
“Exactly what I hoped you’d say. Where’s Árpád?”
The carriage door was still open. There was our tidy little train station, not yet gone away. There was the green mist of the hedgerows and the gunpowder pop of petals. And there was Árpád’s tail, beckoning us back onto the platform with its languorous rope dance. We hauled ourselves and our cases back out into the open air and resumed our walk along the outside of the train, peering in at carriage windows as we went by, occasionally opening a door in order to stick our heads in and whisper: “Hello? Ms. Kapoor? Hello?” Nobody answered, and Xavier put on a caffeine-deficient yet wine-rich daytime television presenter voice to ask: “Who lives … in a house like this?” All we saw were empty seats and curtains drawn across the glass.
As for Clock Carriage … did it even exist … perhaps we’d missed the symbol. “Clocks come in a variety of forms,” I heard myself saying. “There are water clocks, for instance, and sundials …”
Then, at last: our carriage seal. There were roman numerals on it, and the complex cutwork you see on the faces of astronomical clocks. With ten minutes to departure (five minutes, really, to decide whether to let this train leave without us), Xavier and Árpád went in, while I waited on the platform with our worldly goods.
One minute, two minutes, three—they thumped by, second by second, I heard and saw them on the face of my watch. Such a noisy, glaring watch, compared to the shimmering stillness of The Lucky Day. I scanned the windows for faces—none appeared. I leaned in at the door, looking left, the direction man and mongoose had chosen. I called out the portmanteau name they both hated. One way or another it was bound to get a reaction. “Xárpád?”
The corridor was dark, but it shone like a water droplet. Satin and chrome, and no sound, no sound, then a great gale. Paws and hands and feet scrabbling. The door to a compartment midway down the corridor slid open, and Xavier looked out. “Otto, I have a feeling it’s nice in here, but we won’t know for sure until we find the light switch …”
I had been thinking of the train as a selective entity, welcoming Xárpád and discarding me. I’d only just forced myself to laugh at that thought and taken two mocking steps in Xárpád’s direction (what a pair … unable to locate a light switch between them) when the floor hummed and the corridor swung forward with a hiss, compacting slightly, as if shedding excess bulk via pinpricked holes. We were off. I pulled Xavier’s suitcase in with us just as the carriage door slid past the platform, and Xavier, at my side the instant the train began to move, grabbed the handle of Árpád’s case. That was the best we could do. I looked back, just once, to see my own suitcase lying on its side at the edge of the track. I was wearing my Sobota boxers, but the next four days were already lost.
3.
You should know that the train ride was a gift from one Shin Do Yeon. Her nephew had offered to share his surname with me, and I’d managed to accept with sedate
